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In this image, the main character comes from warping the image. Metabrush aids a painterly effect, and the addition of a snake draped around her neck adds interest.
This is the original photo from the Sktchy app. This was a very small file, so I upsized it twice in BigPhoto.
In iColorama, I used Form/Warp to change the shape of her head.
The original was very low resolution. So I smoothed her in Effect/Denoise and Style/Coherence.
I used Effect/Raise preset 1, for emphasis.
Here I used Style/Tensor preset 5, using the same photo as the photo input (using the little "photo" button on the lower right of the screen), to add emphasis to the entire image. While I like this effect a lot, in retrospect I think I would skip this step, because in later processing steps I had to deal with artifacts introduced in this step.
I opened the image in the Metabrush app. In Metabrush, I painted over the background to smooth out roughness from the Tensor 5 step, including getting rid of the shadows from her hair and glasses, which had been intensified in the Tensor 5 step.
In Metabrush, on a new layer, I painted over the entire image. I saved this version to use later.
Here is another painting of her in Metabrush. This time, on a new layer over the above image, I added a patterned image as source image, and painted with that on her face and chest, then reduced the layer opacity. The primary impact on the final image of this step will be to introduce some color/tone variability in her skin tones. In retrospect, I would probably skip this step, as I think it doesn't add much, and may subtract, from the final image.
I will use this snake photo from Pixabay, a source of copyright-free images, to blend a snake into my image.
In iColorama, I used Form/Unperspec to give more of a sense that we are looking at the snake at a bit of an angle, rather than from directly above. Unperspec is a tool for correcting perspectives in photographs.
Now I blended the snake onto a blank white canvas and rotated it slightly to match the orientation I will need in order to drape the snake around the woman's neck and not have the lower right curve of the snake drop off the edge of the canvas.
Using Effect/Blend, I blended the snake onto the woman, using a brush mask to make it appear as if the snake were wrapped around the back of her neck. Also I did not choose to blend the entire snake; I left the left end of it incomplete. We will deal with that later.
With the brush mask still in place, I muted the colors of the snake and applied Scrape to it, to mimic the painted texture of the rest of the piece.
I used Clone to get rid of her glasses and also to extend the snake off the canvas, where it had abruptly ended before, as a result of the blend step.
Now I used Brush/Paint to paint a shadow along the lower edges of the snake, using a soft round brush and gray paint at medium opacity. Then, to blur the shadow, I used Effect/Blur and an inverted brush mask to paint the blur over the shadow.
I blended the previously saved version of the woman that I painted in Metabrush, and used an inverted brush mask to blend her where I wanted a smoothing effect.
I warped her in Form/Warp, and also using Form/Deforms preset 5 several times, to enlarge her eyes, square her head, and increase the space occupied by the snake.
I made several color enhancements.
I used Preset/Border preset 2 at low radius to add some vignetting, using a brush mask on her face so it would not be darkened. Then I used Preset/Border Preset 3 at low radius to add a thin border fade to black around the edges of the canvas. These steps add focus to her face.
Here is a second version, with different warping and different coloring.
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